On Friday, a fake trailer for 13 Reasons Why surfaced online, and it's dangerous. The trailer is expertly edited, so much so that it could conceivably be a trailer for season 2 of the Netflix series. But the footage involves a school shooting — a topic that is hardly uncontroversial in 2018.
The trailer begins in a cafeteria where kids are crouched on the ground, hiding from a shooter.
"Hey. It's Hannah. Hannah Baker," a voiceover says. This is audio footage from the first season. The implication seems to be that the late Hannah Baker (Katherine Langford) has returned to her high school in some way to damage her classmates.
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This is a dangerous and upsetting plotline that is 100% inaccurate — the season 2 trailer for 13 Reasons Why hasn't arrived yet, and, based on what we know, the second season will be about the aftereffects of Hannah Baker's tragic death last season. The show's star Dylan Minnette told Entertainment Tonight in August, "This season particularly is a lot about recovery." His character Clay will grapple with the loss of his friend, and the kids at Liberty High will figure out how to move forward after a traumatic event.
Since the conclusion of the first season, fans have theorized that a school shooting was on the horizon. At the end of the season, photographer Tyler (Devin Druid) filled a car with weapons, seemingly prepping for something. Tyler also had a room filled with photos of his classmates — classmates who had bullied him. One horrific theory was that he was planning to shoot each one of them.
13 Reasons Why has been criticized for its vivid depiction of dying by suicide and teen trauma in general. Executives and cast members alike have defended the show's graphic nature, arguing that it was necessary to tell Hannah Baker's story. This does not, however, mean that the show will introduce something as violent as a school shooting. Series creator Brian Yorkey has implied that the second season will explore the same events as season 1, but through a different lens.
"I think season 2 will give us a look at a lot of things — a lot of the events that we think we know, we may learn are more complicated than we thought, and Hannah is even more complicated than we saw [in] season 1," Yorkey told E! this month.
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That said, it's possible that season 2 of the show does include a school shooting. The second season wrapped in December, months before the Parkland shooting, and the show certainly isn't afraid to explore violence. Another Netflix show, The OA, featured a school shooting in the season 1 finale — the footage from the beginning of this trailer is, in fact, pulled from the finale of The OA. It would disturbing for 13 Reasons Why to include a scene so frighteningly relevant. But there's still time to do something about a shooting plotline; Heathers delayed its release date with the shooting in mind.
When reached for comment, Netflix told Refinery29 that the trailer was fake. The show has yet to reveal a release date for the new season, nor has a second season trailer been released.
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